Artistic License Physics: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:waterfall-Detail-escher.jpg|link=M. C. Escher|frame|[[M. C. Escher]] made a living out of breaking physics...[[Mind Screw|and brains]].]]

 

{{quote|"''To some extent, it's understandable that space adventures play fast and loose with physics. After all, who wants to watch [[Star Wars|Han Solo]] spend years on the journey to Alderaan, only to find that the planet has twice Earth gravity and he can barely stand up, much less swagger?''"|''[http://io9.com/367792/bad-movie-physics-a-report-card Movie Physics Report Card.]''}}

 

Often [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] with "[[How Is That Even Possible?]]" Contrast [[Reality Is Unrealistic]] and [[Cartoon Physics]], as they have their own laws and modus operandi, which is entirely [[Rule of Funny|played for laughs]].

 

* [[Arbitrary Maximum Range]]

* [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever]]

 

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* In episode forty of ''[[One Piece]]'', a fishman believes that dragging Sanji to the bottom of the ocean will cause him to explode from the inside...this fishman clearly doesn't understand the way pressure works, or that there is the word "implosion."

** Admiral Aokiji, who can instantly, and probably completely to the bottom, freeze part of the ocean. Even waves that come crashing down on him are frozen in place.

 

 

* [[The Mighty Hercules|Hercules]], of all people, feels the need to point out everything wrong about Ego compared to how planets are supposed to be structured.

* A 1950s comic by [[Jack Kirby]] has a [[Mad Scientist]] who hates humanity planning to fly into space to drop a bomb that would destroy Earth. He does so, but when he launches the bomb it doesn't fall as he expected, it merely floats where he dropped it off. Then he realizes ''he forgot there's no gravity in space!'' The bomb explodes, destroying the spacheship and killing the scientist, but leaving Earth unharmed. [[Too Dumb to Live|Some]] [[Stupid Scientist|scientist]].

 

 

* Used as a plot point in the Polish sci-fi book ''[[Paradyzja]]''. The eponymous Paradyzja is a xenophobic nation inhabiting a miracle of technology: a gigantic space station that rotates around its axis to generate gravity. {{spoiler|Except not really. Paradyzja is actually just a bog-standard huge building located on a planet's surface. School students in Paradyzja are deliberately taught wrong physics so they don't notice the lack of a Coriolis effect, and visitors from outside are forbidden from bringing many harmless household objects that could be used to conduct a simple, telltale experiment.}}

 

 

* In ''[[Freefall]]'': [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff600/fv00515.htm Sam Starfall fails physics forever], but then [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff600/fv00516.htm so did Ecosystems Unlimited].

 

 

* In ''[[The Simpsons]]'', when Bart, Milhouse and Martin are reading about how Radioactive Man was formed Martin says in astonishment, "I'd have though being caught in a nuclear explosion would have ''killed'' him!"

 

 

'''Note that this is not a trope so much as a series of things that may be goofs, may be a one-time use of artistic license for [[Rule of Cool]], or may be a "proto-trope" in its larval stages, which will one day be common enough to be a trope of its own. As such, please list examples by "type" of physics violation, so we can catch these proto-tropes as they form.'''

 

'''Also note that this is not a forum. If an example is actually not a violation of physics, remove it. Don't debate it here.'''

 

 

* ''[[Spiral]]'' has an excruciating moment where Ayumu's [[Sidekick]] tosses {{spoiler|a key}} down to him from a moving train. Needless to say, it falls [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Inertia straight down] in ''slow motion''.

* In ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'', one arc has the protagonists and their allies playing [[Serious Business|dodgeball]] against an enemy. The game is won by one character making the ball stick to the enemy's wrists, while the enemy was trying to deflect the ball thrown by the protagonists back towards them, volleyball-style. According to the story, doing so made the antagonist be pushed back by the force of the ball until he was out of bounds, while deflecting the ball and changing the velocity of the ball to the opposite direction would have allowed him to hold his ground. {{spoiler|The Law of Conservation of Momentum weeps.}}

** ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' is however one of the few that did actually use the beams to create momentum in the shooter, albeit rarely.

 

* The 1985 ''[[Squadron Supreme]]'' series featured a character named Inertia who's power was "stealing one person/object's inertia" and transferring it to another. This would be a cool and interesting power with many uses of its own but seeing this power in action, it's clear the character is actually transferring ''momentum'' or kinetic energy. Inertia is an object's ability to ''resist'' changes in motion.

 

* In the [[B-Movie|low-budget]] 1990 movie ''[[Captain America (comics)]]'', the title hero is somehow able to redirect the course of a rocket he's strapped to by kicking it ''really hard''. He kicks it so far off course that instead of the intended target, Washington, DC, he ends up in Alaska, somehow not exploding. And moving slowly enough for someone to take a clear picture of him from the ground.

 

* Some very bad simulations of microgravity were used on ''[[Bones]]'', when Booth and Brennen interview an astronaut-in-training on board the "Vomit Comet". Not only did the microgravity-drifting actors push buttons and reach for objects without gripping the walls for stability, but when the plane leveled out and the characters settled back down, Booth's feet came down next to a pen and index card that were ''already lying on the floor''.

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'' is a large space station designed to rotate to produce a simulation of gravity, which is fine in and of itself. However, not only do the sections of the station rotate at different rates to accommodate different alien species (creating problems with torque, stability, etc.) scenes shot on a baseball diamond and in a casino (with a roulette wheel) fail to show the [[wikipedia:Coriolis effect|Coriolis effect]], which should be noticeable in a five-mile long cylinder rotating quickly enough to simulate Earth-like gravity. Although neglecting to consider Coriolis forces [[Fridge Brilliance|may explain why Londo's roulette strategy always fails]].

 

* ''[[The New Adventures of Superman]]'' episode "Rain of Iron". A [[Villain]] on Earth fires an iron ball at an asteroid in space. The ball bounces off the asteroid and flies back to Earth. If an iron ball hit an asteroid it would just embed itself, not bounce away like a rubber ball.

* An episode of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', "Sonic Rainboom", shows Rainbow Dash managing to break the sound barrier and create the titular rainboom, saving Rarity and the knocked-out Wonderbolts from falling to their deaths. However, she then does a 90-degree turn while still moving at about the speed of sound. A fan did the calculations and showed that Rainbow Dash (and the ponies she was carrying) would have experienced well over 1,600 times the force of gravity. On Earth, this would not only kill a living person instantly, it would probably liquefy his body. On Equestria, however, all ponies survive unharmed.

 

 

 

* The first issue of ''[[Nemesis]]'' has the main character stand in front of the outside of an airplane...while it's in mid-flight. Before you ask, no, Nemesis doesn't have superpowers. Yes, the comic is supposed to be realistic.

* [[The Flash]]. While they address the issue of wind friction but giving him an immunity to the heat generated by it, he should have tremendous difficulty with acceleration (positive, or negative) at the speeds he travels. Obviously ignored because the story of a character limited to the speed of a drag racer wouldn't be as much fun.

 

* In an episode of ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the Daleks are fought (in space!) with WWII front-engine prop planes, [[Hand Wave|"modified" according to unspecified Dalek technological blueprints]], that apparently still use the propellers for thrust, and which are able to perform complex maneuvers with no air.

 

 

* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'', at one point in the third arc Satoko freaks out and manages to push Keiichi and his chair all the way across the classroom. Even the reverse would be very difficult, but Keiichi is a guy twice her size. Physics say "this can't happen". [[Tear Jerker|Artistic demonstration of Satoko's breakdown says "screw physics". And then that music in the background...]]

 

* In the first arc of the ''[[X Wing Series]]'' comics, an arc plagued with bad editing, a Wookiee [http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/3060/swrstro308.jpg swings] a wooden stick at a TIE fighter in flight and shreds the wing that he hit. He's not even knocked off balance and the stick is still intact and in his hand, but the TIE explodes. TIE fighters ''are'' a bit fragile for starfighters, but they're still space-capable fighters whose wings work as limited armor. And, in the books of the series, they're able to fly quickly through a forest snapping the branches of trees without taking on damage.

 

* ''[[Up]]'': Carl's house's apparent loss of momentum. Realistically, it would be almost impossible to get going, and then would drag you a hundred feet when you try to stop. Also, the wind would move it better than you, so you'd just be dragged the way the wind blows. And air pressure is far enough from constant that the house wouldn't stay even like that. They also manage to steer the house with control surfaces that are tiny in comparison to the wind resistance of the house, not to mention the balloons, and there's no apparent effect the direction the house is facing would have anyway, especially seeing as it should have no airspeed as it is unpowered.

* Stitch in ''[[Lilo and Stitch]]'', who possesses super-strength, is able to pull a semi-truck to a stop. In the sequel, he actually keeps a space ship from taking off by grabbing onto it. In truth, regardless of how strong he is, a creature of Stitch's light weight could never do these things [[Required Secondary Powers|unless he also had super-anchoring powers]].

** Stitch is dense, and therefore can't swim. He's the size of a small dog, and doesn't appear to weigh much more than one either; the five-year-old Lilo is able to lift him with minimal difficulty. Density is a function of both size and mass, so if he's able to pass for a dog in all respects, weight included, he should have the same approximate density as Lilo does.

 

* In ''[[Spider-Man (film)|Spider-Man]]'', the Green Goblin cuts the cable of a cable car and grabs it to present Peter a [[Sadistic Choice]]. When an object hangs from a horizontal cable, it puts lateral force on the cable (to make it form a V shape, if that helps you visualize). A cable car weighs ''several thousand pounds''. Even if we could [[Hand Wave]] the Green Goblin being able to carry that weight, it would have simply pulled him off the platform he was standing on.

* In ''[[Me Myself and Irene]]'', Charlie's 'sons' manage to take off in a helicopter that, in reality, would have been unable to hover, let alone fly, with the weight of the three in question on board.

 

 

* In the [[DCU]] Daxamites are vulnerable to ''lead radiation''. (This has been retconned into a severe allergy to lead, even in trace atmospheric amounts)

 

* ''[[Plan 9 from Outer Space]]''. Everyone should know that particles of sunlight are [[So Bad It's Good|"made up of many atoms"]]!

* ''[[Eraser]]'' features the EM-1 portable 'railgun'. It is fitted with an 'X-ray scope' allowing the shooter to see the target through walls. Human targets are conveniently presented as skeletons with a pulsing heart clearly visible. First, anything we see is either ''reflected'' radiation (the the visible range of electromagnetic radiation) or radiation emitted by the observed object (like heat detected by thermovisual camera). X-Ray meant to pass through steel and concrete ''twice'' are unlikely to reflect of anything one may encounter in your normal surroundings (X-Ray machines are essentially slide projectors with human body acting as the slide). Furthermore, X-Ray capable of passing through concrete would also pass through bone with ease, not to mention the soft tissues, or the massive dose of radiation this would give out.

 

* In the ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "Allegiance", someone invisible is running around causing trouble. Carter is asked to come up with a way to make him visible, and decides that the right way to do it is to get the [[Applied Phlebotinum|naqahdah reactor]] to emit a burst of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength between 400 and 700 nanometers. While this may sound like [[Techno Babble]], it actually means [[wikipedia:Visible spectrum|something]]—her plan is to make him visible by ''shining a light on him''. Given how closely the numbers involved match up, it's unclear whether this is a goof or just a ''[[Genius Bonus|very subtle]]'' [[Expospeak Gag]]. [[Bored On Board|Or both.]]

* In ''[[Sliders]]'', after launching a nuclear rocket at a comet to destroy it before it hits Earth, Quinn is surprised when it doesn't explode on impact, however Arturo explains the delay is down to the limited speed of light. However, the light coming from the rocket approaching and hitting the comet should be delayed too, so it should still appear to explode on impact.

 

* ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' stats that red armor blocks red lasers and nothing else, while blue armor blocks all laser frequencies from red to blue. They explicitly mentioned in the manual that it is done this way because they don't want to deal with multiprismatic armor, and that the game mechanics work the way they want when they lampshade this license.

 

 

* In a 1960s comic, the Flash once ran across a room and back faster than light could cross it once. While this itself isn't a big deal (Any Flash can exceed the speed of light billions of times over without trying), he did it while he was [[Talking Is a Free Action|holding a conversation]]. [[A Wizard Did It|Speed Force powers GO!]]

 

* ''[[The New Adventures of Superman]]''. In several episodes the narrator said that Superman was traveling faster than the speed of light (186,000+ miles per second) within the Earth's atmosphere. That means in ''one second'', he could fly around the entire circumference of the Earth (~25,000 miles) seven times! It then shows him moving for ''several seconds'' through the Earth's atmosphere.

 

 

* In ''[[From Russia with Love]]'', James Bond destroys a number of attacking speedboats over a large area simply by dumping fuel in the water and lighting it; however this would have no effect if the boats were moving at high speed, since they would be cooled by the splashing water (and its evaporation) faster than they could be heated; likewise, the bow-wave of the boats would extinguish the flames immediately around them. Later movies were worse.

** It should be noted that Bond tricked the other boats into stopping (by pretending to surrender) before igniting the fuel. The explosion caused by the ignition of the fuel containers also sprayed the boats and passengers with burning fuel oil; speeding away would not have helped them at that point.

 

* ''[[Golden Sun]]''. Kraden, attempting to cover for Camelot's bad writing, theorizes that things suddenly became very cold after lighting Jupiter lighthouse,<ref>wind-elemental and located in a temperate region</ref> when lighting Mercury lighthouse<ref>water-elemental, located very far North, in the world's equivalent to the Arctic circle</ref> barely made an impact on the climate, because "wind cools more efficiently than water". This is exactly the opposite of how well wind cools things; air is a terrible conductor of heat.

 

* ''[[Independence Day]]''. In one scene, a traffic jam that fills a traffic tunnel in Los Angeles is incinerated at once, and the protagonists escape simply by ducking into a side door. Even if that somehow protected them from the blast, and from the temperatures of several hundred degrees that would have been generated, the fire would have taken all oxygen from the tunnel, and any survivors would have asphyxiated.

** The [[Novelization]] explains that there was a large floor vent in this room, and that it helped serve as an air intake when the fire blazed through, allowing the protagonists to continue breathing. Don't quite remember how they managed not to be cooked, however.

 

 

* At the climax of the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story ''The End of Time'', the entire planet Gallifrey appears next to Earth and apparently has no effect on either the Earth, the Moon, or their orbits. Gallifrey itself appears to already be moving the necessary orbital velocity, too, since it doesn't immediately start falling towards the Sun.

** Somewhat justified in that Gallifrey was still phasing into our time from the time war. But that's a whole 'nother [[Time Travel|issue]].

* ''[[Smallville]]'''s grand finale had Clark shoving the planet Apokolips out of orbit. It was large enough to fill a large portion of the sky. Then there's the issue of how Clark suddenly had the power to both move a planet and counter the planet moving engines but that's another trope.

 

* The very presence of something as large as the mother ship in ''[[Independence Day]]'' in orbit should have caused flooding, earthquakes, and other severe problems with the Earth. And that's not getting into what the effects of it actually exploding in orbit would be. When it exploded, this would have been definitely been an "Extinction-Level Event" (to borrow the term from ''[[Deep Impact]]'').

** Even earlier, when the alien mothership passes over the Apollo landing site, vibrations erase the astronauts' footprints. There's no medium for the vibrations to travel through. Also, it was supposed to be 1/4 the size of the Moon. Passing that close would have severely distorted the orbit of the Moon. Indeed the gravitational effects should have been detectable months before as distortions of the Moon's orbit around the Earth (which is continually being measured and can be done so with extreme accuracy). Not to mention the effect on the tides on Earth itself. And for that matter the reflected sunlight from the mothership should have made it detectable by telescopes long before it even crossed the orbit of Mars, and once it was in Earth orbit, it should have been visible to the naked eye and have been at least several times brighter than the full moon.

 

 

* ''[[Superman (film)|Superman]]'''s arch-enemy isn't Luthor or Brainiac, but the laws of physics. Due to the wedge principle, picking up anything substantially larger than himself would also trouble Superman, because he is exerting all force on one tight spot. The object would collapse under its own weight. Finally, refer to this for [http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/6094-top11superman everything that is wrong with the climax of the first film.]

** Same in the movie ''[[Superman Returns]]'', when he puts a Boeing gently down by holding its nose, and when he lifts a ship too.

*** It was also parodied in an old comic strip by [[Mad Magazine]]'s [[Sergio Aragones]] in the ''Mad Super Special Fall 1981: The Comics''. An ocean liner has run into a rock and is sending out SOS signals. Supernman tries to rescue it by picking it up from underneath, in the middle of the ship's keel. When he does so, the ship breaks in half.

 

* ''[[Aberrant]]'' actually points out and justifies this in-continuity. Regardless of how a power appears to work, it is actually a "quantum effect" which may incorporate various side effects to make it work like it should. This happens subconsciously, allowing Novas to make their powers work like they think they should work. A mentioned example is a Nova lifting a battleship, which should at most result in the ship breaking instead; the Nova subconsciously wraps the ship in a stabilising quantum effect so it can work "like it does in the comic books".

 

* Similar to the Superman example above, Tracy of ''[[Filmation's Ghostbusters|Filmations Ghostbusters]]'' also has problems with physics. Example: In "The Curse of the Sleeping Dragon," a test of strength involves lifting a temple's pillar, thereby raising the roof. Tracy does this, but in real life it would cause the rest of the temple to collapse! (In the episode, it doesn't.)

 

 

* ''[[Women of the Prehistoric Planet]]'', more well-known since being featured on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'', has a scene in which an alien spacefarer foots his mouth badly while trying to explain Relativity. He proclaims, "It's due to a warp in the time paradox." Nobody has to be a theoretical physicist to know that "time paradox" should have been "space-time continuum." Paradoxes have nothing to do with how fast time passes on an object traveling through space.

 

 

* In ''[[Deep Impact]]'', blowing up the second piece of the comet would not only not help, it would arguably make things much worse. If every piece still impacts the Earth (by that I mean actually is stopped by the Earth or its atmosphere) you are still dumping all the kinetic energy of the comet chunk into the Earth's atmosphere! That's a '''huge''' amount of energy, dumped in practically all at once. It would still create a massive explosion, dwarfing all of our nuclear bombs combined. About equal to 10,000 times the global nuclear arsenal.

 

 

** This tends to be true for any film that shows a damaged or collapsed suspension bridge.<ref>[[The Core]], [[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]], X-Men: The Last Stand, [[Monsters vs. Aliens]], to name a few.</ref> Generally, the central span collapses and the towers are pulled inward as if pulled down by it. However, a suspension bridge uses cables under constant tension to transfer the weight of the span to anchors or counterweights located at either end of the bridge, so the towers are normally kept in balance between the weight of the span pulling inward and the anchors pulling outward. If the span collapses, the towers would bend ''outward'' since the anchors would no longer be balanced by the span.

 

* In ''[[RoboCop]] 2'', both RoboCop and RoboCop 2 fall over 100 stories—but survive undamaged and unharmed, due to the durability of their mechanical parts. However this would still be unable to protect their human brains and other human parts.

* Likewise, Indiana Jones in ''[[Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull]]'' can survive being hurled hundreds of feet because he's inside a refrigerator.

* ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'': Tony Stark survives a fall from hundreds of feet in his Mark I. Granted, some people have survived falls from that height but they typically didn't have an horizontal velocity to combine with the vertical from an arced blaster jump. He doesn't even seem to be injured.

 

* In Jules Verne's ''[[From the Earth to the Moon]]'', the astronauts get to the moon by being shot out of a 900 foot long cannon. In order to reach sufficient velocity to reach the Moon while traveling the length of the cannon, the ship would have to accelerate at 22,000 gravities, which would squash the astronauts inside it flat no matter what precautions were taken.

 

* In ''[[8-Bit Theater|Eight Bit Theater]]'', Fighter survives a ridiculously long fall by [[Achievements in Ignorance|blocking]] [[Rule of Funny|the]] [[It Runs On Nonsenseoleum|Earth]].

 

 

 

* ''[[Battle for Terra]]'': In one noteworthy scene, two humans are watching a room in which an alien is in an alien-atmosphere-pressurized room. Then a human is put into the alien's room, and one of the other humans has to decide whether he wants the human or the alien to live by changing the atmosphere or leaving it alone. He ends up choosing the human, but then, seeing the alien's breather mask, tells his robot to save her. The robot cuts open the glass, at which point the whole window explodes outward as the air in the pressure room escapes—even though this was ''after'' the atmosphere was adjusted to the same human-friendly levels it would be like outside the room.

** The phrase ''cubic pounds of air'' is used. Twice.

 

* In the ''[[Futurama]]'' "The Deep South", the ship is pulled underwater and manages to withstand the pressure all the way to the bottom (they're specifically stated to be at "the exact center of the Atlantic Ocean"). There's a bit of a lampshade hanging here, since when the Professor is asked how many atmospheres of pressure the ship can withstand, he says (with some sarcasm) "Well, it's a ''spaceship'', so anywhere between zero and one." (Of course, ''Futurama'' '''loves''' to play fast and loose with physics in general, so this isn't the worst example of bad science even in this episode.) The crewmembers are also able to walk and breathe underwater after taking a special, er, "pill".

 

* ''[[2012]]'' attempts to justify its scientifically predictable doomsday with an obscure geological theory of crustal displacement formulated in the 50s. The film even throws in an appeal to authority by claiming that Einstein agreed with the theory. The latter is true, and the film depicts at least vaguely accurately what crustal displacement in action might look like. What it fails to address though, is the fact that the theory was formulated before plate tectonics theory was developed, something that didn't happen until the 60s. What does this mean for the movie? Oh, only the fact that the two theories are mutually exclusive, and since plate tectonics is now proven true, the other can't be.

** Furthermore, Einstein, while brilliant, was ''not'' an expert on geology. You wouldn't trust his opinion on plate tectonics any more than you would trust him with open-heart surgery.

 

 

** Though it is mentioned that, of the thousands of arrows fired at the Wall over the course of one battle, only ''one'' actually managed to hit anybody, and that guy only died because he fell off the edge.

* In Iain M Banks' ''Consider Phlebas'' a crew are about to land on a ringworld, and the Captain tells them not to use their antigravity units: "Anti-gravity works against mass, not spin." Never mind what new physics they have to accomodate warpdrive and antigravity, acceleration by gravity and acceleration by movement are still functionally identical, and what works on one must work on the other.

* Averted in Robert A Heinlein's ''[[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress]]''. Soldiers brought from Earth to repress the rebellion on the Luna penal colony resent being there because it is nearly impossible for anyone to return to the Earth after more than a few months on the Moon because their body has acclimatised to 1/6 Earth gravity. The soldiers are also disadvantaged because their normal walking gait learned on Earth causes them to fly into the air. Also, a delegation sent from Luna to Earth must take long and very inconvenient acclimatisation measures just to ''not die'' when they arrive Earthside, and every step is an enormous strain.

 

* Rossini's opera ''[[William Tell]]'' climaxes with the title character standing at the bottom of a cliff, shooting an arrow upward that kills his foe (who was standing at the ''top'' of the cliff).

 

* ''[[Master of Orion]] II'' got "Graviton Beam" and Black Holes ''at once''. It gives a weapon with a special effect and something to navigate around, but theories of gravity do not work this way.

 

 

* Only every shonen fight, ever. Look at any big super powered fight from your favorite long running shonen anime ([[Bleach]] is a huge offender {{spoiler|Ichigo vs Aizen comes to mind}}) and take note of home many times somebody uses an attack that could break mountains. Then take note of how there isn't a deafening sound, a bone breaking, or insane knockback from the attack. Also, there shouldn't be any light produced by an attack, no matter how strong it is, nor should the energy from the attack be rooted to where it actually should go (a body, an arm, the mountain, or simply the ground itself. Lastly, note how despite thousands upon thousands of cracks appearing from these moves, no deafening, ear-splitting earth-cracking is heard!

* ''Project Blue: Earth S.O.S'' has a glaring example of not knowing their sciences. In the third episode, they launch an old fashioned space shuttle using oxygen and solid fuel. However, the observers are watching this craft take off from a few hundred meters away and are out in the open. Even ignoring the fact that the heat from the engine would likely fry everyone at that range, there is the rather large problem of sound. Space shuttle engines when taking off are loud, really really loud. Literally they are loud enough to stop liquid from being able to flow - NASA discovered they when one of their electrical generators stopped working during takeoff. The sheer volume of the engine stopped the fuel from flowing. That level of noise would kill a human being for various reasons - including all their blood not being able to flow anymore.

** Bear in mind that there is also angular kinetic energy (rotational energy) to consider, since a coin flicked at Mach speeds likely tends to spin like mad. But however much angular kinetic energy Misaka's railgun can realistically possesses, the destruction caused by it does still exceed any attainable limits.

 

* In the ''[[Eraser]]'' movie mentioned above, the EM-1 'railgun' is said to propel the bullet (roughly the size of a .50 FMJ) to a speed ''close to the speed of light''. As the kinetic energy equation [E=(mv^2)/2] shows, the muzzle energy of such weapons would be 1,8x10^18 J, i.e. close to 300 MT TNT equivalent (which is 6 times the yield of Tsar-Bomba, the most powerful nuclear device detonated ever). Even at half the speed of light we're still speaking about the yield greater than the one of the Little Boy.

** Even more than that, actually, since the kinetic energy of a massive body approaches infinity as its velocity approaches 'c'.

**And what happens to the bullet when it exits the barrel and hits the atmosphere at "near light speeds"? I wouldn't want to be the poor sap at the trigger end...

 

* In ''[[Video Game Remake|Day of]] [[Mega Man X|Sigma]]'' OVA, Sigma launches several large missiles, think ICBM sized, at {{spoiler|Abel City}}. Several of these missiles touchdown and explode, leaving massive, smoking craters. Obviously, the shock waves from the explosions should've leveled {{spoiler|the city}} outright.

 

 

* [http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/ Cezanne] tended to tilt table and play with angles so that more would be visible.

* [[M. C. Escher|MC]] [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/escher_mc.html Escher] was famous for his physics-defying artwork. The example image is a detail from his etching "Waterfall".

 

* One of the later levels in ''[[Devil May Cry]] 3'' has a huge crush on the works of Escher.

* Torn World in ''[[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl|Pokémon Platinum]]'' is based on Escher's works.

 

 

* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'': Somewhere A Physicist Is Crying. That would be Panel 3 of [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2010-10-04 this strip]. And he cries some more in [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2010-10-11 this strip].

** Turns out this one is simple: A summoner wanted a fire monster, but there's no such thing as "living fire," so he ended up creating a monster that looks like fire but isn't actually hot and can be "extinguished."

 

 

...In other words, [[A Worldwide Punomenon|Steamflunk]].

 

[[Category:Hollywood Science]]

[[Category:Artistic License Indexes]]

[[Category:Artistic License Physics]]